Young Arms Have Washington Nationals Sitting on Top of NL East
Gio Gonzalez: one of the Nats young guns. Photo By: Scott Ableman
If you have been following the first few weeks of the 2012 MLB baseball season, you’ve heard ad nauseam about the slow start from the Angels and Red Sox, Matt Kemp’s torrid start, picking right up from where he left off last year (.460, 18 runs, 9 homeruns, 22 RBIs) and Phillip Humber’s perfect game for the White Sox last Saturday.
While those storylines are certainly worth the media attention, the most compelling, somewhat under-the-radar storyline comes out of our nation’s capitol, where the Washington Nationals are off to a 12-4 start (second best record in MLB).
As discussed in my MLB Preview, the Washington Nationals were a team to watch after finishing a very respectable 80-81 in 2011 inspite of a host of injuries. While the season is only a few weeks old, the Nationals are demonstrating they are for real and have Nats fans as excited as they’ve ever been about their team.
So how exactly are the Nationals out to such a fast start to lead the National League East Division? Simple – by way of a young, stellar pitching staff.
The Nationals, led by ace Stephen Strasburg, have the lowest team earned run average (ERA) in baseball at 2.34, while opposing hitters are hitting a measly .202 against them. Additionally, they rank in the top five in strikeouts (144) and have only rendered 39 runs, second only to the Pittsburgh Pirates.
And boy, has their starting pitching been sensational. Strasburg is 2-0 (1.08 ERA), Jordan Zimmerman is 0-1 (1.29 ERA), Gio Gonzalez is 1-0 (2.04 ERA), Edwin Jackson is 1-1 (4.26 ERA) and Ross Detwiller is 2-0 (0.56 ERA). To give you a better sense of how impressive they have been, the starters have pitched roughly 98 innings of a possible 144 innings, which means that these guys are going deep into games giving their team a legitimate chance to win. The statistics support this too.
Expect the return of Michael Morse to invigorate Washington
All you have to do is look at the games they’ve won so far — a lot of low-scoring 2-1, 3-2 games. The Nationals rank 21st in total offense, with a team batting average of .243 and have scored only 58 runs that puts them in the bottom five for total runs scored. But when you have superb pitching, as the 2010 San Francisco Giants and San Diego Padres proved, you don’t need to score a lot of runs to be successful.
Certainly, they’re going to need help from their offense at some point, because it’s unrealistic to expect their pitching to keep up this pace. The good news is I believe the offense will slowly come around. Third baseman Ryan Zimmerman is off to an incredibly slow start and the Nationals have been without cleanup hitter Michael Morse who has started the season on the disabled list with strain to his lat muscle. Remember, Morse had a breakout season last year for the Nationals hitting .303, with 31 homeruns and nearly 100 runs batted in. Morse is expected back as early as late May, so the hits and runs will eventually come.
In the interim, it will be fun to watch this young core of pitchers perform. What they’re doing is what teams and general managers dream of, while delighting fans and people like myself that love to watch great pitching. Whether they can continue to play at such a high-level in the NL East is anyone’s guess, but who cares right? Nobody expected them to play this well so early, so as far as I’m concerned, they’re playing on house money right now. Greater expectations will come later for this team. Now is the time to just sick back and enjoy the ride.
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The Nats are definitely a surprise, but it’s so early in the season that it shouldn’t be anything worth looking into.. for now. As for Philip Humber, only if the New York Mets found a way to keep him. As usual, they made the wrong move.
Thanks for reading and your comments Blog Surface. It’s definitely early, but I think what the Nationals are doing now is worth watching. They won another game last night 2-1 behind Gio Gonzalez.
It will be interesting to see how Humber pitches tomorrow after his complete game. Can he continue to pitch well? He’s looked good all season….so we’ll see!
It is too early in the season to jump to confusions, but, if the Nationals pitching stays as strong as it has, there is a bright future in the Capital.
Agree and agree! Thanks for checking it out Sam!
They’ve really not proven anything as of yet in terms of results and their standing within the NL East .
Bear in mind their record within the division in recent years . Let ‘em walk before they begin to run as the season is a marathon and not a sprint . This time last year where where they and how did their season end as in terms of the final standings ?
tophatal ……….
Alan — I agree with you. That’s why I said people should just sit back and enjoy the ride because at some point, expectations are going to rise. To answer your question, the Nats were 10-11 at this point last year and finished the season at 80-81. They’re a much better team this year though — whether or not that translates to more wins…we’ll find out!
As great as the pitching has been, it’s not exactly a shocker to those who’ve been following the team through the off-season. GM Mike Rizzo has quietly assembled possibly the deepest collection of fireballers in the history of the game, but they’ve never been all healthy and together at once. What’s more surprising to war-torn Nats fans is that none of them has been injured yet.
On the other side of the ball, the offense was problematic BEFORE Morse and now Ryan Zimmerman went down with injury. The only thing keeping them afloat (other than lights-out pitching) is an April chock full of opponents with bad bullpens (Cubs, Astros, Reds, Mets). That’s why the starters, despite their dominance, don’t have more Ws. The Nationals have cobbled together more than a few late-inning 1-run wins on walks and wild pitches.
So your point is valid. The true test of the team will come in the heart of the season against the NL East and AL East (yes, they play the Yankees, Rays, Red Sox, et. al. this season). If the offense doesn’t get some help, they are bound to struggle more than they have; but if Zimmerman and Morse can come back strong, and Bryce Harper gets a mid-season call up, then that remakes the entire offense.
Any way you slice it, the future looks bright at Nationals Park.
Thanks for your feedback. Good points. Their future does indeed look bright. From my perspective, good teams should beat up on bad teams…bad bullpens. So if you look at it from that angle, the Nats have been taking care of business. Dodgers are in the same boat. They have taken advantage of a weak early schedule, but you can only play the schedule that’s given to you. I’ll be really excited to see Morse come back. Can he pick up where he left off, or was last year a fluke? All I know is when I’m getting calls from my friends in D.C. to talk Nats baseball, you know people are genuinely excited.
Taking care of business… Good perspective. I need to stop tempering my expectations and hang my hat on that one.